


The Long Fall

by Anythingtoasted



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s05e04 The End, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-13
Updated: 2013-10-13
Packaged: 2017-12-29 08:16:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1003080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anythingtoasted/pseuds/Anythingtoasted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>endverse. angst. written for "Lies" by Marina and the Diamonds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long Fall

“There comes a point,” he says, picking dirt from beneath his nails, laying on the porch in the dim Saturday morning light, legs splayed open, body lax and loose, “When you just have to admit you’re incompatible.”

Chuck eyes him carefully but says nothing. They both know well enough who he’s talking about.

Cas lets himself sag down, tipping his head back to clunk softly against the wood beneath him. He lets his eyes close, lids heavy beneath the sunshine, pressing down on him, hard. The air smells like bonfires, burning leaves, and he thinks if he opened his mouth wide enough, eventually he’d taste ashes.

—-

It started in a motel room, when he was just starting to fall.

At the time, it had seemed romantic; he was never sure who moved first but it was probably himself, and at the time they just kissed, just soft, just close, just keeping each other warm. Cas didn’t sleep at the time but he lay beside Dean anyway, legs curled in parenthesis, Dean’s bare feet a warm, solid weight, the image of them – vulnerable, naked – striking him days after.

They went slow, slower than he’d expected, laughing at each other’s hesitancy, careful with their hands. Dean held him like he didn’t understand, like he didn’t know it was harder than this to break an angel; Cas just clung on tight. Dean turned to him when he was weakening, turned to him in the night, laughed in his ear when Cas woke him, kissing his way down his chest.

They were friends then, best friends, hating the world and hating themselves but never, never each other. Not then.

In the motel room that first night, Dean had started off just watching him. He’d sat on the bed, eyes rapt, gaze soft, legs splayed in front of him. “Have you seen this movie?” and Castiel hadn’t, and that was reason enough to stay; at the time, he’d had a choice.

He was naïve; maybe simply inexperienced; but he hadn’t realised Dean’s intent until halfway through the movie, when Dean put a hand on his face, turned him, said “I wanna try something,” with an intake of breath like shuddering.

Painfully, embarrassingly grateful, Cas had surged towards him like he’d waited for it. Dean’s mouth, warm and wet with the bitter tang of beer, had been the first thing he’d ever really tasted, human enough to know that he needed it, angel enough to feel that it was the first step down a long, long flight of stairs.

They cultivated it, however messily. Kissed behind gas stations, kissed in the car, made love for the first time on a shitty motel floor, grinning and halting and wanted.

The first push of Dean inside him had made him cry out, both of them stilling, joined. Dean looked down at him, eyes wide, blown away. Not even undressed, the thing a rush, slippery fumble, they had taken their time like it really was the end of the fucking world, dust stirring around them, Cas arching and mumbling and grasping for his hand.

He’d been dripping after, sweat and the come pooled on his stomach, and once Dean had settled beside him, half-naked and filthy and smiling awestruck, he’d pronounced it “lovely,” and fallen asleep to the soft rumble of Dean’s surprised laughter in his ear.

—-

They travelled together for four fucking years, trying to make it stick. Failing. The camp was what came after; after Dean got drunk and punched him the first time, neither of them sure who started it; after Cas fucked Dean for the first time, bit down on his shoulder hard enough to bleed, and Dean just said “It’s fine, it’s fine,” then, “Do it again.”

Lines blurred, acceptance waned. Cas would stare at the side of his face some days and feel that same rush of love he had always known, heady like the first time he inhaled anything, the way it punched a hole straight through his skull, in his throat, behind his eyes.

Other times he’d look and think, “ _Who are you?”_

He doubted either of them really knew. Their only ties were to each other then; nomadic, sans family, clinging tooth and nail, thinly to hope. Fraying a little more each day, they all but stopped talking, buried themselves in the road, in each other.

They talked once, a conversation that will never leave him. He was dwindling to his last, grace a bare dreg in the pit of himself, and Dean had offered him a beer one rare calm night. Neither of them had the energy for fighting, a blessing and a curse, and Dean had curled his hand around the neck of his own bottle, tipping his head back to drain every drop.

“Will you bury me?” he asked, melancholic, and Cas had tried to laugh it off.

“Doubt there’ll be anything left to bury, the way you’re going,” a poor joke, not really, but this was what they had. Dean had looked at him.

“I’d do it for you,” he said softly, and Cas had felt his body seize, love like a memory he’d all but let go of, surging and grasping his wrists. He tightened his grip on the bottle, so hard he’d have broken it if his grace weren’t rotted to a thimbleful.

“Hopefully you won’t need to,” he’d said, but not meant it. He didn’t like it, living on morbidity, focusing on death. There was little else around them, sometimes, but Cas preferred to skirt it as best he could. The fetid stench of blood was familiar to him now, riper and thicker than it had ever been with grace as a dam between them. He tasted things better, sharper; knew the rankle of sweat, the plunge of blood in his mouth, the taste of Dean’s skin, his come. Food took a backseat, incomparable to the tastes of the body, varied and salty, unsatisfying.

“I hope I go first,” Dean had muttered, barely above a whisper, and Cas had suggested they go inside, after that.

Sex was a distraction, always the same no matter what they did; but that time stuck out.

Dean begged for him, pulled him around then lay back, spread, body a warm coil against the sheets. He pleaded for Cas to kiss him, pleaded for his fingers, for Cas to fuck him with his hand, kiss his hips until he came. He drew them together and jacked Cas with his hand, soft as if the effort was almost too much. He let Cas come on his stomach, didn’t complain about the mess.

Cas didn’t know what to do with himself, after. Sometimes they slept together, sometimes Dean would refuse, sometimes Cas would remove himself on purpose. More than once, Cas had taken the back seat of the car rather than stay beside him.

But then he was trapped over Dean on all fours, staring at him as he turned his face away, eyes closed.

He was drunker than Cas had realised. He said “Sorry, Cas, Sorry,” but Cas didn’t ask him why.

He folded them together, arms and legs, chest to chest. Tucked Dean’s head beneath his chin and barely slept all night.

In the morning there was no talk of being buried. Cas thought perhaps he was relieved.

—-

They found the camp through word of mouth, and settling there was a decision made more by Cas than Dean.

He’d honestly thought it would be good for him – something sure, something physical, somewhere to come home to. Mistakenly he’d thought perhaps the travelling was the problem, the rootlessness; perhaps, there, they could be safer, more careful, more in love.

The reality, of course, was that they took separate rooms.

Dean came to see him sometimes, but not often; the contrast to living in such close proximity was startling, overwhelming; Cas would see him during the day and wonder if it was acceptable even to say hello.

They fucked a little; when Dean was drunk and lonely, when Cas laughed careful, calculated, against the back of his neck.

There was no real breaking point; they’d been sliding downhill a long time; but Dean told Cas he loved him once, and then something – he wasn’t sure what – entirely stopped.

They’d been out on a trip in the jeep, and Cas – foolhardy – broke his foot being reckless, forgetting he was no longer so easily fixed.

The whole way back Dean had fretted over him, hands careful around the bone, practised. He’d helped him back to the cabin, sat beside him while he slept, slipped him painkillers.

He’d pushed the hair back from Cas’ face and said “Love you, Cas,” a pause, “I know I don’t act like it.”

Cas had been too delirious, too sleepy to even reply.

But the weeks it took him to heal were harder, and he barely saw Dean, after that. He would linger in the doorway as Cas drifted between sleep and wakefulness, but never come in, never sit down again. When Cas was finally healed the distance between them was so large that he couldn’t even begin to parse it, and when Dean came to him one night looking for comfort – a little solace, a little heat – Cas told him where he could go, instead.

Easier to say than to follow through. Nights after they were together again, Dean fucking him against the wall, mindful of his foot.

It was like his mind understood it all – they weren’t right, weren’t safe, weren’t  _kind_ together – but his body could not, always inching closer, always accepting the hand when it was offered. Something sick about them but sweet, too; Dean a flame he kept putting his hand in, though it wasn’t like he was any better, himself.

Somewhere along the way they just got lost.

—-

Chuck says nothing of the two of them, ever. The whole camp knows, though Dean might think they’re inconspicuous; knows they fight, knows they fuck, knows Cas loves him. Knows he’s given up.

He can see the barest sliver of the sky from where he lies, and he folds his hands over his chest; breathes in, breathes out.

“I know when I’m beaten,” he lies, and Chuck just huffs softly from beside him. “I’m not going to try anymore,” he lies again.

Chuck says “Yeah,” like he isn’t listening. 


End file.
